My name is Nic Barilar, and I’m a theatre teacher, historian, and artist. My students call me “Dr. Nic.”
After earning my PhD in theatre and performance studies from the University of Pittsburgh, I joined the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2022 as Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies. Here, I teach courses in theatre history and literature as well as performance, direct productions in our 6-show season, serve as recruitment coordinator, and write on Irish theatre history.
Welcome!
Nic out Galway Cathedral on the River Corrib during a recent research trip to Ireland.
Theatre Making
Theatre itself is at the heart of all of my work. My experiences as an actor and director deeply inform my teaching and research and vice versa. I typically direct a full production each semester at UWL. I’m a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and have worked across the eastern US in professional settings. In recent years, I’ve written dramatic adaptations for the UWL stage. I’ve also served productions as a dramaturg, dialect coach, and scenic painter and carpenter. I invite you to learn more about my work by clicking the buttons below!
Above: Máiréad Ní Ghráda’s On Trial at PittStages, the North American premiere of an Irish classic. Directed by Nic Barilar.
Photo by Danielle Barilar.
Teaching
Photo: Lovely Day Photography.
Since 2013, it’s been my pleasure to teach undergraduate courses in theatre history, dramatic literature, performance studies, acting, directing, freshman writing, and others. I have taught in a wide range of settings and for many different audiences, including an asynchronous online performance theory course for general education students, upper-level acting courses, theatre history surveys for cross-disciplinary theatre majors and minors, scenic painting to early-career artists and interns in a professional scene shop, and more. In the history and literature classroom, my pedagogy seeks to help students understand the links between culture and performance and that students can change culture through their own art and scholarship. In theatre practice courses, I emphasize methodology coupled with critical conversations, connecting craft with cultural considerations.
Historical Research
My research focuses on Irish theatre and drama, especially in the mid-twentieth century, but pursues multiple lines of inquiry. Much of my work to date has investigated transnational issues in Irish theatre. This has included, for example, a series of histories of banned Irish plays performed both within and beyond Ireland. These pieces use the performances to theorize censorship in transnational terms. I have also endeavored to reframe the work of major playwrights like Samuel Beckett through transnational lenses, looking, for instance, at his (and the other so-called “absurdist” playwrights) engagement with the decolonial events of the 1950s and ‘60s. I am also working, however, to illuminate and elaborate or key social and political issues in mid-century Irish theatre — a much-neglected period in Irish theatre historiography.
My writing has been published as book chapters in edited collections of essays as well as articles in scholarly journals. Follow the button below to learn more about my past, current, and future research projects.
Newspaper article from a private collection, published 1958.